by Dennis Green
I recently found on sale in the Sharper Image department at Kohl’s a Homedics “Mini Percussive Massager,” a little hand-held unit that really does the trick on those sore and aching muscles, arthritic joints, old injuries and that torn rotator cuff.
It takes three AA batteries and delivers quite a good thumping. Some nights, if I can’t sleep, I switch it on and just run it up and down my legs and arms, lingering on the calf muscles, the shoulders, the thighs. Mmmmm… Good!
Over the years, I’ve tried all sorts of these devices — from vibrating wands to foot pads and back rollers, hand-helds and neck cushions complete with heat. Most of them don’t do much, or are so violent they dislodge kidney stones I’ve been storing up for the next millennium.
I found most of these gadgets at yard sales and thrift stores, and get rid of them in the same manner, but this little Homedics is a keeper.
And no, I don’t think it would serve as a makeshift vibrator or sex toy. It might break something. Ouch!
Several months ago, in my “ZenDada” column, I referred to the invention of the electric vibrator for women, which came before the invention of the electric vacuum cleaner. I had been researching the ailment of so-called “hysteria” believed common among women in Victorian times, when I came across the reference to vibrators.
They had been invented to provide some relief for doctors from their labors, giving women “pelvic massages,” which were thought to relieve hysteria. (Caused, it was believed, by either hyper-sexuality or sexual frustration…) The vibrator, in other words, provided relief for the docs from their manual dexterity. Ah, the resourcefulness of mankind!
The human nervous system is a wondrous network of sensory devices, chemical reactions and electrical impulses. It provides us with perceptions through all the five senses and other apperceptions that are keener in some people than in others, and it houses intelligence, and perhaps even consciousness, although certain degrees of awareness may not be physical in origin at all, but “of the spirit.”
And it can go haywire in so many different ways. From epilepsy to fibro mialgia, autism and other developmental disabilities, blindness, deafness, hypersensitivity, OCD, various nervous dysfunctions and depressions we call “mood disorders” — most of them neurological in nature and best treated with medication, or in the most severe cases, electro-shock therapy. Talk therapy rarely helps.
Sometimes, massage, acupressure, or acupuncture can relieve some of the underlying tensions that we “store” in our muscles and nervous tissue. Stress is a killer, and often more causative in the incidence of heart disease than high cholesterol.
If vibrating massage chairs, rollers, cushions, pads and hand-held devices also help relieve the effects of stress and tension, I say, all the better! And if you’ve never had a long foot massage from a loving partner, you don’t know what you’ve been missing. Offer one, and get one back, today!
©2009 Dennis Green
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